[GLLUG] inodes and ls -dl

C. Ulrich dincht at securenym.net
Thu Nov 20 15:47:55 EST 2003


On Thu, 2003-11-20 at 12:35, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> Michael Cox <cox-m at sbcglobal.net> writes:
> 
> > I am running through the IBM tutorials and come to 
> > 
> > ls -dl /usr/local
> > 
> > This is supposed to display all the directories shared
> > by the inode.
> 
> That's not what -d or -l does with GNU ls.  Read the manpage.
> 
>        -d, --directory
>               list directory entries instead of contents, and do not  derefer-
>               ence symbolic links
> 
>        -l     use a long listing format

Simply put, ls -d prevents directories from being searched recursively.
This is most useful when you want to list only directory and file names
that match a particular glob pattern. Let's say you want to list, for
example, all of the files and directories in /etc start with s, so you
do:

  ls s*

which might give you the following listing:

  services     shells       shells.bak   spwd.db      sysctl.conf 
syslog.conf

  skel:

  ssh:
  moduli                      ssh_host_dsa_key.pub  ssh_host_rsa_key
  ssh_config              ssh_host_key                 
ssh_host_rsa_key.pub
  ssh_host_dsa_key  ssh_host_key.pub          sshd_config

  ssl:
  openssl.cnf

Now this isn't too bad, but if you try a similar command where a whole
bunch of directories match, then you have to waste time sorting through
potentially hundreds or thousands of lines of extraneous information.
ls -d will prevent that:

  ls -d s*

returns:

  services   shells.bak   spwd.db   ssl/                 syslog.conf
  shells       skel/             ssh/         sysctl.conf

That's much more manageable.

Charles Ulrich
-- 
http://bityard.net



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